For murder though it has no tongue,
Will speak with the most miraculous organ.

-William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

Up the close and down the stair,
But and ben with Burke and Hare,
Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief,
Knox the boy that buys the beef.

-A song commemorating murders by William Burke and William Hare in 1820's, who allegedly killed as many as 32 persons, to supply their bodies for dissection to the anatomist Dr. Robert Knox of Edinburgh. This song is still sung on macabre occasions in England today (quoted in "Almanac of World Crime" by Jay Robert Nash at page 271)

Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And gave her mother forty whacks,
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

-A song sung about Lizzie Borden, who allegedly killed her parents (father and step mother) at Fall River, Massachusetts on 4 August 1892, but was acquitted by the jury in June 1893 (quoted in "Almanac of World Crime" by Jay Robert Nash at page 194)

You have borne up under all, Lizzie Borden,
With a mighty show of gall, Lizze Borden,
But because your nerve is stout,
Does not prove beyond a doubt,
That you knocked the old folks out, Lizzie Borden.

-Another song sung about Lizzie Borden, this one giving her benefit of doubt: composed by A.L. Bixby (quoted in "Almanac of World Crime" by Jay Robert Nash at page 194)

You can’t chop your poppa up in Massachusetts,
Not even if it’s planned as a surprise
No you can’t chop your poppa up in Massachusetts
You know how neighbours love to criticize.

-Yet another song sung about Lizzie Borden:. Composed by Michael Brown in “Lizzie Borden” (1952)

Sometimes Playmates get killed.

-Paul Snider (1980) to his friend shortly before killing his wife Dorothy Stratten, who had been Playboy’s Playmate of August 1979 (quoted in “Murder - Whereabouts” by J.H.H. Gaute and Robin Odell, page 82)